


Metamorphosis

by CloudDreamer



Series: Demon Eyes [3]
Category: Dr. Carmilla (Musician), The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Disordered Eating, Hurt No Comfort, Loss of Control, The Siren Saga, Vampire Turning, painful healing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:35:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24358918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudDreamer/pseuds/CloudDreamer
Summary: Doctor Carmilla wasn’t always a monster.
Series: Demon Eyes [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1698556
Comments: 7
Kudos: 14
Collections: Stowaways' Shenanigans





	Metamorphosis

Her teeth won’t fit in her mouth. 

They’re too sharp. If she forgets about them for even a moment, she cuts her tongue or her lips or her gums on them. She has to hold them ajar or try to force them together, like puzzle pieces that don’t quite belong. She doesn’t even know why or how they’re like this. It wasn’t a one-two process. That moment of violence, that half death, and then boom, monster where Carmilla used to be. It wasn’t slow but steady either. 

If she’s not painfully careful, she moves too quickly or with too much force. She’ll break whatever she touches, but it’ll break her too. When she clenches her jaw, these new teeth don’t crack as easily. The old ones kept fracturing, and each time, they healed different. The other parts of her don’t change when they’re torn, just this. 

Her words don’t make it out whole. Her s’s are swallowed, the edges blunted, and the movement of her tongue hurts. There are a thousand knife points, razor wires she has to walk to make herself heard. She used to sing. She wonders if she’ll ever sing again. Surely not. Surely, it’ll be easier never to speak. 

She reaches up to the part of her face where her left eye used to be, slowly and delicately, but all the grace in the world couldn’t keep this wound from screaming at the contact. She manages, for the first time, not to tear the injury further. She winces, and her teeth tear into her gums as she grits them reflexively. She’s reasonably sure the jaw is fine this time, but she can’t still keep the tears at bay. Somehow, beneath the bloody gauges his nails left, her tear duct still functions. 

Her skin is cold. It’s strange, because she doesn’t feel cold at all. Her body is on fire, like she’s been running for hours, even though it took everything she had to drag herself away from that dark place, and she moved so slowly. So carefully. She broke concrete with every languid step. It’s been days and nights. She’s slept heavily, but she’s as exhausted as she was when she started. There’s something wrong with her, something more than this bone deep tiredness and alien strength and too quick recovery. Something more than the scratches that won’t heal, as jagged and painful as that night. 

Something inside her chest. Her heart beat’s still, her blood doesn’t flow, and there’s something else missing. She’s rummaged through her kitchen a thousand times, tried to force her meager relations down her throat, but each time, it feels wrong. She’s still hungry, still tired, but it’s not right. She’s not thirsty at all, doesn’t need to drink and doesn’t want to. She doesn’t look down at herself, doesn’t touch the outline on her throat that match with the mark her new teeth would leave on anyone else. 

Carmilla knows what’s wrong with her. She recognizes the look in her one remaining eye when she catches a glimpse in the mirror. She’s haunted by the same shadow she saw in him. Something in her is twisted, frozen in that moment between death and life. She doesn’t belong on either side of the line anymore. 

She pulled shut the curtains the moment she could muster up the energy to, but she hasn’t yet forced herself to turn back on the lights. She can still see. Not because she’s grown used to the dark. Her vision hasn’t changed at all. It was just like this. She doesn’t blink unless she forces herself to, and when she forces herself to, it hurts. She shuts that eye too tight. She didn’t realize that was something that could break, with too much force, but everything Carmilla does now is with too much force. 

She can’t touch her instruments anymore, not without breaking them. Her favorite ukulele lies in pieces on her bed, and she feels her throat closing up again, choking. She doesn’t want to start crying again, not intensely, because then she’ll want to hit the wall. There’s enough cracks. She doesn’t want a hole. She’s slumped against one of those walls now, knees against her chest but not tight. Not close enough to shatter her rib cage again. There are chunks of bone scattered around her, nauseating to consider but impossible to ignore. 

This isn’t even the worst part. Carmilla feels that wrong hunger rising in her. She doesn’t know how long it’s been since that night, but she knows the further she gets from it, the stranger she becomes. This disease is entrenched in her, turning her inside out, and it’s not done yet. There’s something yet to come, something feral. Something hot and mean. 

Carmilla tastes gasoline and blood. She thinks she’ll drown in it before she’s done.


End file.
